Wendy’s had a presence at the X Games, but presence alone does not earn credibility. The goal was not visibility. It was relevance. To connect with a culture built on authenticity, Wendy’s needed content that spoke the language of the community, not ads dressed up as content.
My Role: Advertising Production Lead
Action sports culture rejects anything that feels forced. You cannot show up with a camera crew and expect to matter. Get it wrong and you do not just get ignored, you get rejected. The challenge was finding a way to participate without breaking trust, while still showing up in a way the brand could own.
Instead of sponsoring from the outside, we worked from the inside. Former pros, past medalists, and people still in the mix helped shape the work end to end. This was not influencer marketing. It was inner-circle marketing. We let insiders lead, prioritized cultural fluency over brand control, and created moments that felt native to the community. Bacon Boards beat banner ads every time.
We built a creator-first campaign designed to move at the speed of the moment, executed across two X Games properties, Winter and Summer, each shot in compressed windows with minimal resets and maximum proximity to the action.
Handheld grit over commercial polish. Field energy over studio control. Shoots across two events, with former pros and past medalists shaping the work from the inside. The goal wasn't to produce ads. It was to produce moments that felt native to the community. Then get out of the way.
Bacon Boards became the signature of the Summer activation. Wendy's branded bacon grip tape on skateboards, the kind of detail that only works if you actually understand the culture. The Good From the Great captured the Winter Games with the same approach: credibility first, brand second.
As Production & Creative Lead, my job was to create the conditions for great work to happen fast. On set that meant decisive, heat-of-the-moment creative calls, with the freedom and responsibility to deliver the best work possible without a safety net of extra time or budget. I coordinated the creative team and X Games crew in real time, keeping the work anchored to the brief while letting the environment shape the execution.
The broader strategic bet was placing the brand into the hands of creators who knew the terrain and treated the space with the respect it deserved. Cultural fluency can't be faked in action sports. It has to be earned, or borrowed from people who already have it. We borrowed it from the right people, and the work landed accordingly.
Select moments from the work.
Action sports culture doesn't grant access. It has to be earned, or borrowed from people who already have it. We borrowed it from the right people.
Credibility first, brand second. That sequencing is what made it land.